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This is a pivotal shift. The issue is no longer which channels we use, but who controls the guest narrative and the data behind it. Hotels will not win by fighting OTAs on scale or ad spend. We win by aligning revenue, marketing, and sales around a single guest intelligence strategy using data to drive relevance, not just reach.

OpenAI, Google and Perplexity will reshape this landscape again. Nobody knows how exactly but 2 years from now the picture will be very different.

Stop playing the OTA game—change the game with the product. Yes, third parties are taking control of search, booking flows, and traveler data—but copying their playbook won't reclaim the guest relationship. If you try to "out-CRM" Expedia or "out-loyalty" Airbnb, you're choosing a scale game you can't win.

The idea of AI-crafted reviews doesn't worry me as much as the possibility of losing the emotional color that real guests bring to the table. Yes, quick prompts will make feedback easier and remove a lot of noise but hospitality has always lived in the small details that guests describe in their own words.

Can the future of hotel reviews be completely AI-generated? - Yes. Will it? Only if we think reviews will continue to be read by humans, which is highly unlikely, as already they're mostly digested by LLMs through semantic analysis to derive trends, sentiment, and suggested areas of improvement.

In the next 3–7 years, expect: 95% of reviews to be AI-generated from structured input, platforms to become "reputation orchestrators", users to see personalized, not universal, review summaries, hotels to optimize for models, not guests, because models shape guest choice.

The most transformative disruption we’ll bring to the hospitality industry by 2026 lies in end-to-end workflow automation across hotel operations, not just individual tasks, but entire processes that currently require too much manual effort with too many handoffs and that may unnecessarily create security risks in today's high data security environment.

We believe AI will most profoundly disrupt operational scheduling and resource allocation across spa, wellness, and leisure departments. These areas are traditionally managed through manual guesswork, disconnected systems, or static templates.

I believe the biggest disruption isn’t a single task - it’s the entire commercial workflow behind meetings and group bookings. A third of all hotel room nights tie back to a meeting or group, yet hotels still burn thousands of hours on manual qualification, data gathering, and proposal-building.

Hotels don't need another mega OTA, rather, they need partners who create real value. Airbnb's shift into hotels is less innovation and more defense. With Booking.com dominating STR volume and commissions rising, Airbnb is simply repositioning to stay competitive.

To be fair, one could argue Airbnb has already been functioning as an OTA for years. It facilitates transactions, controls the marketplace, shapes pricing behavior, and now they are onboarding more hotels and aligning its commission structure.

I believe we're at the point where it really doesn't matter anymore how many OTAs we have. It's gotten so bad for hotels that it almost can't get any worse — and it barely matters which one of them is draining our margins or taking over our guests.

It's abundantly clear that the US hyperscalers are unable and unwilling to regulate themselves. A $100 million pro-AI super PAC formed in August, backed by OpenAI's president, has identified its first pro-legislation target to oust.

The divergence in AI regulation is less about "innovation versus control" and more about who will define the operating system of the future economy. The US optimises for velocity and scale; the EU for rights, accountability, and systemic risk.

Yes, the gap in AI innovation and adoption will continue and expand. This disparity is less about well-intentioned policy and more about an ongoing geopolitical battlefield where technology sits squarely in the 'armed forces' of the major powers.

This is a really thought-provoking take. I agree that metasearch isn't dead. it's evolving, quietly powering AI-driven interfaces rather than existing as a visible marketplace. The first to benefit will be those who can move fast and think at scale likely OTAs while traditional booking engines risk becoming just another costly layer.

Rather than disappearance, we're witnessing transfiguration: the logic of metasearch is alive, but its form is shifting from a visible comparison table to an invisible, integrated intelligence layer.

Simone's argument resonates strongly with me. If metasearch has dissolved into the invisible infrastructure of distribution, then the next challenge is redefining where real value lies. With conversational AI agents now capable of pre-filtering, recommending, and contextualizing travel options, simply consolidating data from various sources is no longer enough.